My Digital Life

It is very contradictory when think about my digital life being part of the new media writing trend...I sort of enjoy the convenience within, and I sort of hate the impetuous it brings.

I remembered my really first "writing" (Here 'writing' I considered is contributing one's own content to the internet) in new media experience is setting up my own Website about my comic drawing when I was around 12 or 13. Using Front Page as design software, I dedicated the website mainly to displaying my drawings. I remembered those days sitting in front of computers counting the visiting amount everyday happily. And I did get several comments in the small 'message book' I found as plug-in.

That website ends with the third year's bill - RMB 49.00 from 163.com. I became too lazy to went to post office and pay the bill by complicated mail process. And it was about the start of Year 2000. Good old days.

Now I found flicker's functioning pretty much the same as my little website back then. Just Flickr has more clicks and is free of charge...(-_-)

And here it is my link...if you don't mind:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/singingmonsters

And after saying Goodbye to my Website 1.0 life, I became a fan of Blogging. Of course I tried forums and chatroom as well, just to find they're not as concentrate as blog for me myself to speaking out my own opinion. 

Why do I need to speak out? That's because I fell in love with two basketball players like crazy that time (I still love them now~oh my~). I so much want to collect every piece of information of them and share with the world hoping that someone else with the same fever towards they two as me might look at my blogs and I will know I'm not alone.

What is different from my web 1.0 experience is that this time I got a lot of comments from different people. It is a joy to know people's feedback. I draw and write about them and my net-friends who came visit love those creations. We communicate a lot and I met a lot of really good friends during this period. That was Year 2006~2009.

That blog is still here, sweet!>.< Just the last post is almost one year and a half ago...

http://hi.baidu.com/kkibou/home

After that period, I move more into college study and my time runs short. And it is then I met interest-sharing based website like Douban and mini blogs like Sina Weibo. I also met SNS such as Facebook and Renren (it is the mainland China version of Facebook). That's the Year of 2008 and 2009. Web 2.0, the read-write web starts to dominate the Internet world. And all those platform aim for providing a chance for people to express themselves meanwhile get comments from others.

Among all above I believe I love dounban.com the most. The (most of) trash talk and meaningless information shared by my classmates or friends (not that close of course) in Facebook and Renren.com makes me feel annoying. And the social news re-tweeted in Sina Weibo makes me feel information overload and exhausted.

But in Douban, it is much more comfortable. Because everything there is based on my choice and "common interest". For me Dounban seems like a combination of transitional website, blogging, mini blog, interest-based forums, and SNS.

Having all these sweet characteristics combined, douban becomes really entertaining as well as informative for me. For instance, here's a mini website called "Neo-classical" I fanned. This mini website blogs everyday about related paintings, photographs and articles which contains quite a lot knowledge.

And those friends I fanned because of same interest share nice things via "broadcasting" (the mini blog function) everyday as well. In a way, I will have the chance to know what people that I appreciate feel worth recommending. Isn't that wonderful?

In a conclusion, even though I can reflect my new media writing life in a relatively clear way, I still have that type of contradictory feeling towards it. It teaches me to look for new things actively and listen to others. It always about choosing the right tool. you got to know what you're expecting to gain when you write online.

I learn a lot through this, but at the same time I think I waste quite a lot of time on it. Since you know, browsing website is too convenient to be distracted. Maybe it's about controlling the balance, maybe I just need to be more self-desplined.

What's more, I think in the future when I try to run a studio or company, writing in new media form is definitely going to be something that I'll try to utilize a lot. Because I know it is powerful.

Blogging Experience

My blogging experience

I think blogging is a lot  like traditional writing:
First we gathered information. Second we convey our own opinions.
Besides a much better capability to suite nowadays people's living pace, what differs new media writing from traditional writing is how these two steps start and how they end.

How is it? When I was writing using pen and paper, I probably like writing novel or prose rather than augmentative. And I think it's mainly because the degree of difficulties in gathering supportive information. Apparently, we need to equip our readers with material and related knowledges in order to better communicate with a topic chosen by us. That could be harsh. But in new media writing this process becomes much easier.

What I like writing in new media the most is its accessibility towards almost every extended extra things that I think may help my audience to understand the issue. Moreover, we can have various visual plane as subtle guides when we're "preparing" them. For the readers, they don't need to follow the old linear way to read your work any longer. If they're interested in the topic, they're free to jump over and do their own research, which leads to a better communication afterwards.

So when I blog, I'm not afraid of taking the latest news as example or quoting difficult / professional terms which I believe truly essential. Because I know I can make those words all clear for my audience by a million other ways for instance a Wiki link or a lovely video. Blogging is timely, blogging is almost omniscient.

The advantages of gathering information is for sure making new media writing stronger in many aspect.

And after that is the conveying ourselves part. If gathering information is merely easier and more flexible in new media writing than the traditional one, conveying ourselves part seems even more similar as the old days. Just tell people what we think about, isn't it?

Well perhaps no. I think when we write online, we might be braver to speak out our own point of view because of a lower risk of getting challenged or getting into trouble (This is for small individuals, in a contrast for those big companies / organizations writing in new media form brings themselves more public oversight. ). And most importantly, we'll be more looking forwards for communications with our readers. That means to keep our mind open, learn to listen and discover more within.

Writing in traditional way is more or less authoritarian. But writing in new media can never be.

I started blogging like six or seven years ago, when I was still a middle school girl. I used to be a fan of blogging. But when I went to college gradually I move more and more towards mini blogs (e.g. Sina Weibo) or website which serves more like interest sharing communities (e.g. Douban.com). I used to write a whole individual blog about some small things happened in daily life and later I embedded them into the mini blog function because of the simplicity. For example, I add short reviews as message when I mark a movie or book "watched".

I will still consider that as blogging as I am posting contents to the world and open for comments. In fact, I believe every word we post to public is blogging. We say something in the internet is just like we sit down in the Cafe and have a coffee with some potential one who's willing to listen and comment. The difference is just now your potential friend (or maybe enemy) comes quicker and from a larger amount.

Internet Justice vs Privacy

Critical Issues in Writing for New Media

Internet privacy is a topic that got discussed again and again ever since the trend begins.

It is true that one has to face the dangerous of leaking out something that they don't want others to know about their real identity when enjoying the convenience and satisfaction from Internet. And after these years, people are getting more and more of consciousness protecting their personal information online. 

It is almost a closed case that one's privacy should be protected even if it is in a virtual world. But is it always the case? My interest is more about how is it when privacy is facing "Internet Justice".

 

"Internet Justice", I'm not sure if it is appropriate to call it this way. When I say this, I mean the actions towards one or some particular internet users taken by the other internet users because of the judgments that they made based on information gathered online.

This sounds confusing, let's try to strike an example:
On September 2011, it is reported in a lot of website in mainland China that four youngsters throwing a small dog into see for several time obviously for their own entertainment.

The poor dog is rescued by the other tourists later. But that doesn't stop the anger of many internet users. Because the time and venue of this event is in detail reported and the photographs showing the four perpetrators is relatively clear, net-citizens starts trying to find out who exactly they are in reality. 

Some say, "Once they're found, we should protest to their company and let it fire them". And some others proposal the rest to make harassing phone calls to make them apologize.

The four perpetrators are young people about twenties and it's no wonder that they may have their own internet account in different blogs, forums or SNS. As a result there does is a chance that they got recognized by the other net-friends and then their real identity got revealed. So now my question is: Do you think it's right for the other net-citizens to dig out the four youngsters' private information and then punish them in real life because of their wrong behavior?

This situation becomes more and more common these years with the internet grows. We now have new words for example "Social Search" or even "Human Flesh Search", which sounds pretty scary, to describe this type of action taken by net-citizens.

For sure, one's privacy is violated in all these types of "search". Their lives in reality might be affected in a large degree because of something they do in the virtual internet world. But what if what they do in the virtual world do have some negative impact to the whole society as all the other net-citizens believes that it is the only way for 'justice'? Do those net-citizens have the right to take actions as if they're the "low enforcement"?

There is no doubt that as the internet grows, our lives would inevitably get more and more involved / reported online, directly or indirectly. Does that mean another type of surveillance? Given the condition that the information exposed online is often segmental and hard to distinguish, is it fair to assault one's real life based on that? Or even if the net-user is confirmed committing bad things, is it ok for the other net-citizens to take the police's role and 'punish' him by first step digging out his privacy? That really worthies thinking...

Writing in New Media

What's new media, and what's new in writing for it? For me, the answer is efficiency and convenience, which, lead to a bigger chance for the communication between the 'author' and 'reader'.

The efficiency comes from both the participation from the large amount of internet users and the connectivity of it. When using internet, you can write anytime and then publish it immediately and the everyone in the world might be reading it. Time is so obviously precious for people living a a digital era. So it is understood what's the quickest is most of the time the best. And since revealing one's own opinion to society is always the human need. This erase of limit of authority becomes a huge encouragement for people to write.  At the same time, it is much easier for people to get into trouble for speaking out comments in real life than online. The safety of secrecy is attractive.

Even though so often this characteristic might get twisted and creates difficulties of distinguish truth and false, it does provide us internet users with huge information database. Hence, it is definitely a real powerful tool if there's something you want the world to know.

And the convenience of new media writing comes from many more aspects. In traditional media we accept information most likely linearly. We read words from newspaper and we watch videos on the TV. When we become interested in some secondary things mentioned in the main content we can not jump directly to it. But in new media writing this situation completely changes.

In the web page, we have hyperlinks and search engine which can takes you anywhere you want. The author may put in hyperlink for his or her audience's reference. And the readers can also freely go grab extra information based on maybe just several  keywords which arose their interest. There's no boundary of learning in internet and no more physical restrictions such as time, distance or money.

All these characters of writing in new media are for sure valuable. You can create a webpage, write a blog, tweets about your lunch, or update your Facebook status like crazy. But what's most important is that you're communicating with others, with your friends or strangers, with the world. The advantages of new media writing eventually leads to a future of read/write web (Web 2.0) which's built on the input from both the original content creators and the comments from the readers. 

Internet is virtual, but the communication happen within is not. Real value and productivity always lie in the communication between human beings. 

New media writing is enhancing both the efficiency and convenience of this type of communication on the whole. That's why I believe we should take it seriously in to account, and also enjoy it!;)